Our adventures with a toddler

Redondo Marina lunch cruise

We wanted to try to actually ‘go somewhere’ on the boat, and decided that King Harbor, or more specifically Redondo Beach Marina would be a good place to start.

Skipper

I had called the marina the day before to see about temporarily tying up somewhere and they said it would be no problem.

We fired up Island Side and left C basin with Gabriel in his carrier with his mom. The weather was beautiful, the sea was flat. The only problem was that there was absolutely no wind. So we motored! What a drag it is to have the motor on the whole way, although the sound and vibration seemed to keep Gabriel asleep.

Sleepy crew

We passed the anchored tankers near the 2ES buoy and continued, seeing a couple of sea lions on our way. Eventually we arrived at Redondo Marina and I called the harbormaster who directed us to our temporary slip. Initially I couldn’t see it, which was really scary because Redondo Marina is far smaller than I am used to. I decided to turn around and take another look. Luckily the week before, my friend George had taught me how to do a torque turn. This is where you can rotate the boat 360 degrees around the keel without really moving forward or backwards. It was a life saver because while we were rotating around to head out to open water, the harbor master walked to the slip and yelled and waved his arms. I just continued the turn and put us in.

Yum!

We had a bit of a stroll along the Redondo pier and grabbed some delicious fish and chips from the restaurant there, as well as a beer. Gabriel had a great time looking at everything and talking to the server. He was particularly enthralled by the windows, which had fly-screen on them.

After lunch we walked back to the boat and cast off and away we went. There was a bit of wind so we were able to sail for, say, 20 minutes before we got frustrated with our 1-2 knot boat speed and decided to just fire up the motor again. Oh well, one day we will sail!